How healthcare sector is placed in its digital transformation journey

The healthcare industry in India lags behind other major sectors like banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI), IT-enabled services, and manufacturing when it comes to technology-enabled business transformation, a new study has found. The report was jointly released by Edge Insights, a market research platform and a sister unit of TechCircle, along with IT company NTT.

Sectors like BFSI, ITeS, and manufacturing have had an early movers advantage, having consistently invested in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), secure IT infrastructure robust Data Management platforms, and are aided by government initiatives, and strong leadership. These industries have also managed to build a strong alliance within their ecosystem and gain a competitive advantage.

The state of business transformation (BT) in four industries (healthcare, BFSI, ITeS, and manufacturing) was studied, with a special focus on healthcare. They were allotted BT scores, basis five pillars — operations, ecosystem, people and leadership, innovation, and technology. The national average BT score was found to be 3.34. In term of individual industries, BFSI outperformed the other three with a BT score of 3.40, followed by ITeS (3.37) and manufacturing (3.29). The healthcare industry scored the lowest at 2.94, with markedly poor performance in terms of a mature ecosystem and technology adoption. 

The report noted, “We found the key reasons of slower transformation rate, primarily due to soft degree of adoption of technologies & investing in new age platforms, a lack of collaboration within the healthcare ecosystem, where there is a high rise of HealthTech startups bringing several solutions at every step of healthcare value chain.”

To this end, the study suggests that healthcare organisations rejig their operations and leverage data-driven insights. Further, the healthcare industry should break data silos and create a structured architecture to apply required analytics for critical insights. In terms of building ecosystem collaboration, there is a need for early and seamless adaptation of digital ecosystem with new capabilities and fostering new partnerships with healthtech startups.

Despite challenges, the healthcare industry offers a scope for massive growth. Emerging technologies like AI in healthcare will add $25-$30 billion to the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2025. Within healthcare, AI application is found to be prioritised in patient care and experience, diagnosis, and research and development. The overall sector is showing positive growth signs, mainly due to high investments from the government, and its plan to increase the spending by nearly 3% of its GDP by 2025.